Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee...

I love Evan's third grade teacher.  She was new to the school this year and came in with a whole crop of fresh ideas.  As much as I love the fact that my kids have had the same teachers and we have established relationships with them, sometimes it is nice to shake things up a bit - at least as far as homework and curriculum go.

 

Because of an idea that Evan's teacher found on Pinterest and wanted to try, this year the third graders had a Wax Museum Project.  It was a pretty extensive project.  The students had to pick an American hero and then find a biography and other information about them via internet or what have you and learn about their chosen hero.

 

They had a worksheet with general information to answer that gave ideas of what kind of information the teacher wanted them to find out.  Then they had to take that information and come up with at least ten important facts about their hero and type them or write them out and put them on a trifold poster board along with photos and other things to represent their person.  They also had to find a costume or props that they could use to dress up in to become their hero at a wax museum that the whole school would attend during the day and that parents could attend later that evening. 

 

The American Hero that Evan chose was Davy Crockett.

 

 

 

He had the coon skin cap from his Halloween costume from two years ago so that was the main part of the costume.  He borrowed the jacket from my Aunt Peggy.  The jacket was awesome and perfect and the best part was that she wore it as a kid.  A friend of Grama Bonnie's let him borrow the powder horn and the bota bag.  A super simple costume and he looked so great.

 

They also had to come up with some sort of "button" that they could place in front of their poster that would have them turn on during the wax museum and start spouting out their facts.  For Davy's button, we just covered a box with fur and cut a slab of wood (actually from the base of our Christmas tree) and Evan wrote on it with a burning tool.

 

 

He wanted to bring some kind of gun to school, but since it is a school - no weapons are allowed.  One of his classmates lent him this bow and arrow.  He was pretty stoked about it.  I thought it kind of detracted from his costume.  The fluorescent doesn't really fit in with pioneer days.  Just an example of one of the things I have to let go - it made him happy - just go with it.

One of the pages on the worksheet that they filled out during their research was a sheet of reflection.  The question posed to the kids was:

 If your hero could give you advice, what would he say to you that would help you in your life? 

Evan's answer:

That life is hard but it can be good. And when it is, look to God and say thank you or please help.  And when that worst moment happens just think - at least I was born.

Could you just die of the cuteness?

It was a really cool project and all the kids did an awesome job. I almost can't wait for Hailey to be in third grade so we can do the project again.